Are People Naturally Haters?

FEMINISM/POLITICS - I recently came across a person who explained that some people believe that its natural for people to be racist, sexist, etc. because they're afraid of things that are different:

"It's natural for human beings to be afraid of new or different
people and strangers, therefore it's our inherent excuse to be racist,
right?"

I humbly disagree.

I don't think people are inherently afraid of things that are different. I agree that we are instinctually afraid of things of things like spiders, snakes, tigers, sharks, etc. because the fear of such things has been ingrained in our genes over millenia of evolution. Note: People don't hate such creatures, they're just afraid of them because they're dangerous and that is an important difference.

I don't think people are meant to be racist/sexist/ageist/classist/etc. Such fear/hatred is not the result of genetics but are caused by social constructs created by society.

Also when applied to sexuality if anything we can say with some degree of accuracy that people are naturally attracted to opposites. Men and women aren't naturally afraid of each other. Gynophobia and androphobia only develops later in life due to traumatic events.

Likewise children aren't naturally racist. Children are driven to play with each other and get along easily regardless of race. As they get older they develop beliefs that may cause them to bully, fight and discriminate against other children who dress differently, wear glasses, have different hair, etc. but those beliefs are the result of bad upbringing and certainly not the result of genetics and "natural fears".

Likewise when we apply such ideas to religious discrimination, ageism and classism it becomes obvious that discriminatory behaviour is the result of societal stereotypes against the rich/poor, the young/old and people of different faiths/no faith.

I do think however there might be a natural aversion to people who appear to be confusing with respect to gender/sex. If you see a person who you can't tell whether they are male or female a person's natural response seems to be confusion and avoidance. I don't think its pre-disposed to being fear/hatred (homophobia is still a social construct), but simply that confusion is the result because the viewer is confused as to whether the person is a potential mate or competition.

I'd argue people are more naturally afraid of competition.

Korgoth of Barbaria

ENTERTAINMENT - In a dark future wasteland, the great cities have risen and fallen, primordial beasts have reclaimed the wilderness and thieves and savages populate sparse, dirty towns. From the frozen north emerges a warrior known as Korgoth, and his merciless savagery may be his only key to survival...

Korgoth of Barbaria was the pilot episode of an animated fantasy-action-adventure-comedy from Aaron Springer for Adult Swim (a slightly adult oriented cartoon cable network), but Korgoth unfortunately never got beyond the pilot episode. The show as loosely based on Conan the Barbarian but also pays homage to pop culture references like Dungeons & Dragons, Russ Meyer and fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.







Sign Petition to Bring Back Korgoth of Barbaria!

Female Bodybuilders at Work

HEALTH/SEX - Beauty is in the eye of the beholder right?

Well, what about female bodybuilders?

I'm not talking about regular women's weightlifting which doesn't cause women to look masculine.

No, I am talking about the steroid and testosterone chugging professional female bodybuilders who have devoted their lives to looking like... well... men.

Arnold Schwarzenegger specifically.

Some of them aren't so buff as Arnold, but the ones who take it seriously are taking so many testosterone pills that their voices have become masculine and they can no longer conceive children due to infertility.

Its so much that they're really just a sex change surgery away from being considered men.

Some of the female bodybuilders view their strength as a source of pride and even support feminist views on the topic, but its not very natural.

Female Olympic weightlifters don't use steroids or testosterone pills to bulk up and develop bulgy muscles.

In our modern world, where bizarreness is becoming more commonplace, there is a select group of men and women who find the bulgy look attractive on women.

So much so that there is a booming porn industry catering to men who like bodybuilding women... a bit disgusting to some people. Almost like gay porn in a way with all the muscles and such.

You would assume female bodybuilders would get regular jobs that require heavy lifting, like piano movers or construction work, but apparently the porn industry pays better.

Begging the question: Do female bodybuilders use Secret antiperspirant? (Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman?)







Some female bodybuilders look more natural than others.

British Boys having Penises Crushed

HEALTH - Falling toilet seats are injuring an alarming number of recently potty-trained toddlers in Britain, a British study reports. The medical term for the damage for it? Penis crush.

Ouch!

Heavy wooden, ceramic and ornamental toilet seats are the biggest source of injuries, says Dr. Joe Philip of Leighton Hospital who warns that parents and grandparents should be extra vigilant during the holidays.

"As Christmas approaches, many families will be visiting relatives and friends and their recently toilet-trained toddlers will be keen to show how grown up they are by going to the toilet on their own."

In the British Journal of Urology, Philip and his colleagues focus on four boys under the age of 4 who were admitted to hospital with injuries serious enough to require an overnight stay. All had been trained and were using the toilet on their own using the classic male standing up and pissing position. They had lifted the seats, which later fell back down and crushed their penises. Fortunately, the injuries did not cause lasting physical damage, although the child might become traumatized and prefer sitting down to piss for the rest of their lives.

"We are concerned that the growing trend of heavy toilet seats poses a risk not only to their health, but to their confidence," Philip says.

Because of the height of some toilets there's also devices (see image right) for toddlers too short to reach the toilet properly.

Apparently the boys aren't lifting the seat to its fully upright position and releasing it before its properly in place. Doctors and pediatricians believe boys should be warned about the dangers of crushed penises and taught to lift the seat up properly and holding the seat with one hand. Some doctors even recommend supervision, but this feels more like the parents are worrying too much and coddling the child.

For those parents worried about the issue they should really just teach their boys to piss while sitting down and when they're older they can practice standing up to piss.

The study's authors are calling for manufacturers to design more seats that fall slowly, and for heavier seats to be banished from households with young boys. Philip cites a recent market research report suggesting a "worldwide increase in the number of wooden and ceramic seats sold" will result in a similar increase in crushed penises.

I think this is a situation of survival of the fittest/smartest. These boys need to be taught, and those that don't figure it out on their own deserve to get their penises crushed. It weeds out the dumb ones from reproducing.

Brainy Sperm at Work

HEALTH/SEX - Watch out! Smart, well-endowed sperm are out there and they're looking to reproduce!

Rosalind Arden of King's College, London, and her colleagues have published a new study in the science journal Intelligence which concludes that brainy people (and their sperm) are intrinsically healthier and that intelligence is sexy.

The study is actually about the quality of men's sperm, and the correlation between intelligence, genetics and health. By intelligence they used quotient of linguistic facility, spatial awareness and several other factors measured by psychologists using a value called Spearman's "g".

G whiz.

Arden and team have discovered that an individual's g value is correlated with many aspects of his health, life-span, overall fitness.

There are two possible explanations:

1. Intelligent people make healthier choices.

2. Genetically healthy people become more intelligent.

We already know intelligence is often a deciding factor when choosing a mate, and that over millions of years mankind has evolved due to choosing mates that were healthier/smarter. Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who is one of Arden's co-authors, believes this process of sexual selection is the reason people have become so brainy.

Arden sought to test this idea in a way that excluded intelligent choice and got directly at any physiological correlations between intelligence and health. She chose sperm quality because it is both easily measured and about as far from intelligent choice as it is possible to imagine.

The relevant data had already been collected from former American soldiers enrolled in what was known as the Vietnam Experience Study. In 1985, almost 4,500 of these veterans volunteered for extensive medical and mental examinations. Some of them gave semen samples that were analyzed for three types of sperm quality: the number of sperm per cubic centimetre, the total number of sperm in the ejaculate and sperm motility.

Arden found 425 cases suitable for testing her hypothesis, namely donors with high intelligence g values, and correlated them with all three measures of their sperm quality and thus determined that intelligent men have healthier sperm.

Thus in the Darwinian sense of fitness these men have the ability to survive (through a combination of intelligence and overall fitness), to attract mates and to produce offspring.

It is an important finding, according to Arden. Up til now, biologists looked at "fitness" as a series of adaptations that are more or less independent of each other. Arden's work adds to the idea of a general fitness factor, f, that is similar in concept to g. Now we know that intelligence and fitness can go hand in hand.

So why then are jocks so dumb and nerds so weak? You see there's a false assumption there, that strength equals health/fitness. Athletes frequently have health problems because they put their bodies under a lot of stress, so they're not really healthier or smarter.

Evidently more needs to be studied on this topic and studying healthy sperm from intelligent men is only the tip of the iceberg penis...

Begging the question, does this mean men really do think with their dicks? No seriously, if we're so gung ho about reproducing and healthy sperm/brains does co-exist, maybe there is a bit of truth to it.